A team of researchers performs some nano-magic on a well-known material to increase its thermoelectric efficiency
A new low-cost, nanotech-based approach to power generation developed by researchers at Boston College and MIT could lead to cleaner-running semiconductors, air conditioners, car exhausts and more. The technique, published online yesterday in Science, uses the nanostructures to dramatically increase thermal efficiency.
The researchers didn’t invent a new material so much as re-work an old one, a semiconductor alloy that’s been used in various devices for five decades. “We have found a way to improve an old material by breaking it up and then rebuilding it in a composite of nanostructures in bulk form,” says BC physicist Zhifeng Ren.
And this isn’t some far-off application, either: The scientists say it could be applied to existing products, enabling them to consume less energy, and use energy that might other was be wasted.
In the kitchens of today’s cutting-edge chefs, food processors share prep space with appliances straight out of the lab. See our gallery of the most extreme kitchen tech—as well as some more accessible gizmos for the home chef
A kitchen equipped for “molecular gastronomy”-gourmet cuisine as cooked by Mr. Wizard, basically-is all about the tech. Devices that wouldn´t be out of place in a chemistry lab fill the kitchens of some of the world´s most adventurous chefs, enabling far-out dishes like whipped-cream pancakes, lobster sorbet (shells and all) and meat-flavored mushrooms. Wiley Dufresne, head chef at one of molecular gastronomy´s Meccas, WD-50 in New York City, is so protective of his machines that he wouldn´t allow them out of his kitchen to be photographed for this piece, insisting that we get our own. And so we did.
